


Finding sanity

by chouxchan



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mental Instability, Minor Angst, Romance, implied depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 13:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3693725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chouxchan/pseuds/chouxchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaejoong is depressed, Yunho has the mental age of ten as a result of PTSD. They find each other in the hospital garden, and together, they find their sanity, their happiness, and their love.</p><p>A fluffy cake with angst toppings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Well, Jaejoong-sshi, to answer your question, no. No, you're not going insane. You have depression. As for the good news, cognitive behavioural therapy, also known as CBT, has shown very promising results", doctor Park Yoochun smiled professionally towards his newest patient, a writer who tried to kill himself following depression caused by a family relationship gone really bad.

"What's that?" Jaejoong asked.

"Basically, in addition to the anti-depressant medication, you and I are going to try to change the way you look at the world."

Jaejoong raised a skeptical eyebrow. He was never one for psychology to begin with. He didn't even want to be here now, and he probably wouldn't have if Junsu hadn't personally driven him to the mental hospital, pushed him out of the car and speeded off before he could so much as open his mouth in protest.

Yoochun spent the next ten minutes showering Jaejoong with scientific explanations and treatment statistics, until the writer simply gave in.

For the last half hour of the first therapy session, Yoochun and Jaejoong talked about the latter's life in general, focussing on good memories and things that normally made him happy. As the session was about to end, Yoochun left Jaejoong with some 'homework'.

"This hospital has a beautiful garden. After our sessions, starting today, I would like for you to take a stroll in it, and... 'smell the roses', as they say. Can you agree to that?"

"I guess..."

"Good. Then I wish you a nice walk, and I'll see you next Friday."

* * *

Luckily the weather was nice, so the walk in the garden wasn't too bad. After a while, Jaejoong sat down on a bench under a tree for some shade from the strong sun. Looking at the other people, mostly patients, he spotted a man his own age, skipping happily over the grass, sporting the standard issue hospital pyjamas in white and blue.

Feeling suddenly sentimental, Jaejoong thought that it might be nice to just let everything go and build a world of your own, ultimately losing yourself in it.

Realising that Jaejoong was watching him, the man waved and skipped over to the bench, plopping himself down next to Jaejoong.

"Hello, I'm Yunho, what's your name?" the man said in one single breath.

"Jaejoong."

"How old are you? Should I call you hyung?"

"I'm 29."

"Me too! At least on paper..." Yunho added in a mumble, barely audible.

"Huh?" Jaejoong asked.

"Never mind. When is your birthday?"

"February 4th."

"No way! Mine is on the 6th! Then I don't need to call you hyung, do I? We're practically twins!"

"Whatever works for you", Jaejoong said, slightly awestruck by the other's effervescent personality.

"What do you do?"

"For living? I'm a writer. You?"

"Artist. I draw everything I see. Even things I imagine. An ahjusshi bought one of my paintings once, and hung it in a museum for everyone to see."

It was surprisingly easy to talk to Yunho — mostly because he did 90% of the talking at supersonic speed —, and Jaejoong briefly forgot how hopeless his world was. While listening to Yunho talk about his adventures that he wanted to go on, Jaejoong allowed himself to feel good, for the first time in almost a year.

Suddenly, Jaejoong was pulled from his reverie when he heard Junsu's squeaky voice call out his name.

"Who's that?" Yunho asked.

"My brother. He's the one who drove me here, and now he's back to take me home. I guess I have to go... I'll come back next Friday, maybe we can talk more then?"

"I'd love that."

"I need to ask you something", Jaejoong said before going to Junsu.

"Hmm?" Yunho was distracted, playing with a flower he'd spotted under the bench.

"Is this a good hospital?"

"It's great! But..."

"But, what?" Jaejoong asked, suddenly and briefly imagining human experiments or something like that.

"They don't have any Choco Pies. Not since one of the noonas opened the vending machine and ate all hundred of them in half an hour... I _really_ miss Choco Pies", Yunho added with a childish pout.

"I'll bring one next time, okay?"  _And every time after that._

"Really?!?"

"Really."

"Hyung! Come on, we need to go now if we're gonna beat rush hour!" Junsu called.

"You should go", Yunho said, and Jaejoong heard a faint trace of sadness in Yunho's voice.

With a wave and an "I'll see you next week", they parted. Jaejoong went home to his apartment in Gangnam, and Yunho went inside for his therapy session.


	2. Chapter 2

"What are you drawing?" Changmin asked his brother. The med student had finally found a window in his murderous exam schedule to go visit Yunho.

"My next adventure."

"Can I see?"

Changmin looked at the picture, showing Yunho and some other guy with huge, sad eyes, standing on a pirate ship made out of a banana, with a Choco Pie wrapper for a flag. The name of the boat read Friday, in Yunho's childish writing.

"Who's this?"

"Jaejoongie. He's my new friend. I met him yesterday. He met doctor Yoochunnie because he's sad, and afterwards he came out in the garden. He's gonna come every Friday. He has a brother named Junsu, who has a yellow car and a voice like a dolphin and a big butt like a duck."

Changmin chuckled at the description. His hyung definitely had a vivid imagination.

"Sure, hyung, whatever you say."

"It's true! Noona, tell him!" Yunho urged the nurse sitting across the table. She nodded, commenting that they were both really handsome.

"Changmin-ah", Yunho said after some thought, suddenly serious.

"Hmm?"

"When someone is so sad that they have to go see a doctor, that means it's really bad, right? How are you supposed to cheer someone like that up?"

"Shower them with love and kindness, do fun things with them, and just be your usual, amazing self, hyung. That should do the trick. But be patient. It might not work right away. You might have to try a lot. He could have some bad memories that are making him sad. Until he can deal with those, it will be difficult for him to be happy."

"So, mission number one is to fight the bad memories? Okay."

Yunho picked up a pencil and wrote something in one of the clouds. When Changmin saw it, he almost teared up at the gentle soul that was his brother.

_Brave pirates Yunho and Jaejoongie starting on their journey towards Happy Land. First mission: Fight the Bad Memory Monster._

The following Friday, Jaejoong nervously went out into the garden after his therapy session. What if Yunho had forgotten him?

Jaejoong soon spotted Yunho lying on the grass, hands behind his head, munching on a banana. The funny image of a Yunho submarine popped into his head, and he couldn't help but smile, for the first time in several months.

"Yunho-yah!" he called out. Said man sat up like a bolt, eagerly looking around, searching for whoever had called his name. When he spotted Jaejoong, his expression became bright and happy, and he waved enthusiastically before scrambling up and running to him.

"You came back! I waited like crazy all week!"

"I said I would, didn't I?"

They sat down on the grass, under a tree, and Yunho started telling everything he'd done or imagined doing since their last meeting.

Jaejoong could only listen and admire the handsome, cheerful man facing him. He felt as if these meetings with Yunho would be more helpful than any therapy sessions — he felt a bit sorry towards Yoochun for thinking that — and he slowly but surely felt his desire to live return.

"Is something wrong?" Yunho asked suddenly, pulling Jaejoong from his reverie. The writer had been resting his chin on his arm, which in turn was resting on his knee, while sporting an almost lovestruck expression.

"Hmm?"

"You're staring at my face... Is there something weird about it?"

"Not at all. I was just thinking how beautiful you are, inside as well as outside."

"Well, I look the same regardless of where I am..." Yunho half-joked awkwardly, suddenly shy, scratching his ear, flattered.

Jaejoong couldn't help but laugh at the cute comment. It was the first time he'd laughed in ages, and it felt really liberating. To Yunho, the laughter sounded like bells ringing beautifully, and gradually everything around Jaejoong shifted into shades of pink and gold, as the artist fell in love with the writer.

* * *

"Oh, right, I almost forgot", Jaejoong said before reaching down into his bag, searching for something. Yunho watched curiously. His mouth formed a small 'o', when he saw that it was a Choco Pie.

"I promised, didn't I?" Jaejoong smiled while handing Yunho the cake, which the latter accepted with a smile.

Yunho took a bite of the cake and closed his eyes, finally tasting the sweet treat after so long. If he had had a tale he would have wagged it.

After swallowing, he looked at Jaejoong with a smile. "I think I wanna marry you now".

"Because of a Choco Pie?" Jaejoong chuckled. Yunho merely turned his gaze away and stuffed the rest of the cake in his mouth, trying to still his racing heart. _Yeah... Sure... Whatever you say... Smooth sailing, Captain Jung._


	3. Chapter 3

Little over a month had passed since Jaejoong's first therapy session, and "Yunjae Couple" had become very popular among the nurses and patients. Even the doctors were taking bets on when they would confess to each other.

Cho Kyuhyun knocked on Yoochun's office door, pulling the older man from his patient files.

"Hey, sunbae", Kyuhyun said, putting a can of vending machine coffee on the desk before sitting down.

"What's up?"

"As I'm sure you've noticed, Yunho and your new patient are hitting it off very well. They're the hospital's power couple."

"Yunjae is big this year", Yoochun smiled.

"My question is this: did you introduce them to see if they could heal each other?" Kyuhyun asked with one of his trademark cheeky smiles.

"No. I _did_ , however, decide to send Jaejoong to the garden _after_ noticing that it was their outdoor time. The rest I left up to them. And if it's working, who am I to stop it?" Yoochun added with only a slightly smug shrug of his shoulders.

"All in the patients' best interest, huh?"

"Yes."

"So you're not spending your Friday afternoons up here, staring at them through your window and shipping the living daylights out of them like a fangirl, then?"

"O-of course not! I'm a professional", Yoochun sputtered in a failed attempt to keep face.

"Then I guess you won't want a poster saying 'Keep calm and ship Yunjae' to go with that Yunjae Fan Club President reputation you pretend not to have?"

Kyuhyun laughed as he jumped away from the stress ball Yoochun threw at him.

"The guy at the hospital, your new friend, what's his name? He seems familiar..." Junsu said thoughtfully as they were having dinner.

"Jung Yunho".

"Jung Yunho? Not the painter Jung Yunho?"

"Well, he does draw, often and quite well. He's the one who made that drawing of me", Jaejoong said, pointing towards a beautiful pencil portrait now hanging on the living room wall, next to the banana boat drawing Yunho had given him on their second meeting.

"Oh, hell no."

"What?"

"Hyung, do you remember that painting you like so much at the Seoul Modern Museum? The one that inspired you to write your first book?"

"How could I forget?"

"Do you remember who made it?"

"Jung...  _Yunho_ ..."

"The youngest painter to ever show at that gallery. Age 18, one year before he suddenly disappeared after a traumatic experience."

"Oh, hell no." Jaejoong repeated Junsu's words.


	4. Final

During their next meeting, Jaejoong asked Yunho about his paintings, wondering if he really was  _the_ Jung Yunho. Suddenly looking very sad, Yunho nodded, curling up into himself.

"What happened?"

"Promise you won't walk away after I tell you."

"Of course. I'm not going anywhere. You're my best friend."  _And maybe more..._

Yunho related everything that happened ten years ago, starting with the stalker, the kidnapping, and the brutal rapes that went on for eight horrible days until the police found them. He told Jaejoong that afterwards he had been irresponsive for almost a year, locking himself inside his mind. During that time, he hadn't spoken at all, but had experienced horrible nightmares when the memories intruded his unguarded, sleeping mind. When that had worn off, he had been in a mental stage of a ten-year-old, and stayed that way ever since. 

"When I was 21, my parents admitted me to this hospital, and I've been here ever since. They don't visit, but Changmin does. He's my baby brother. He's studying to be a doctor, so he's really busy, but as often as he can, he comes to see me. I was really lonely until you came." Yunho hadn't noticed that he was crying, but he did notice the warm, tight hug that Jaejoong gave him.

"It's okay. I got you", Jaejoong whispered, trying not to cry tears of his own.

* * *

Once Yunho had stopped crying, he and Jaejoong had their first deep and serious talk about the difficult things in their lives.

"I don't believe you're crazy, Yunho-yah", Jaejoong said after Yunho mentioned what a gossip article had written. "I think you're trying to cope with a horrible experience, and that you can get out of it if you get help and support to heal."

"That's what doctor Yoochunnie says, too. Truth is, I didn't want to heal before, because that meant dealing with all the bad things in the world, including my memories. Instead I chose to be happy, by whatever means."

"And now?"

"And now... you and I fight the bad memories together", Yunho smiled, referencing the pirate drawing. "It's gonna be okay, isn't it?  _We're_ gonna be okay."

"Yeah. You and me both. I believe in you."

"And I in you."

_ 3 months later _

  
"Well, Jaejoong-sshi, I have happy news. Your depression has recovered so much that you no longer need to have weekly sessions with me. From now on, once a month should be enough", Yoochun smiled.

"Great. Thank you."

"It's all you. And maybe... Yunho?"

Jaejoong smiled. The two had grown closer and closer over the past months, and lately, Jaejoong spent all his time with Yunho at the hospital. He couldn't remember a time when he was this happy, even before his parents disowned him for being gay.

"Yeah. Speaking of Yunho, how is he doing?"

"I can't tell you much about another patient, but there  _ has _ been definite and significant improvements since you've been here."

"I'm happy to hear that."

_ 5 months later _

  
Jaejoong massaged his sore wrist after finishing a long day of book signings. His newest book,  _ Finding Sanity _ , loosely inspired by his and Yunho's relationship, had been a bestseller hit.

"Sorry, Mr. Kim won't sign anymore books today", Jaejoong heard his manager say as he bent down to retie his shoe.

"Oh, come on, just one more, yeah?" A very familiar voice urged. Jaejoong almost hit his head on the table as he quickly sat back up to confirm.

"It's okay, hyung", Jaejoong said quickly, smiling at Yunho as the manager let him through. "Yunho-yah, what are you doing here?"

"They released me from the hospital. I don't need to escape anymore. Aaand... I thought I'd ask my healer out for a proper dinner."

"Did you now?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of dinner did you have in mind? A thank you dinner for a friend, or a...  _date_ ?"

Yunho suddenly blushed furiously, since the latter option was  _exactly_ what he was hoping for.

"I... uhm..."

"Date it is", Jaejoong smiled, walking around the small table and locking his fingers with Yunho's.


End file.
